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Software Engineering vocabulary · Programming Concepts

Higher-order function

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, higher-order function means: A function that accepts another function as an argument or returns a function as its result.

In Turkish: yüksek dereceli işlev

How it is used

Used when discussing reusable transformations and function factories. The name concerns function inputs or outputs, not code quality.

Example sentences

  1. Our map helper is a higher-order function that applies a callback to each item.

    Accepting the callback is what makes this helper higher-order.

  2. The validator factory is a higher-order function because it returns a new check.

    This example qualifies through its output rather than through a function argument.

Common collocations

  • use a higher-order function
  • higher-order function composition
  • functionA named block of code that does one job. It can take input values, and it often returns a result to the code that called it.
  • callbackA function passed to another piece of code so that the receiving code can invoke it when needed.

More terms: Programming Concepts

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